We know the bad news already. You see it wearing a tracksuit and pushing its
buggy down every high street, a look of benign resignation etched on faces
that still light up at Scooby-Doo cartoons. As tabloids compete to chase
down the nation's youngest mother, the headlines about teenage pregnancy are
obliged to shock and appal. Last year we had the 11-year-old who was
impregnated during a ”cannabis-fuelled romp”; in 2001 the DNA of five men
was tested to identify the father of a 12-year-old's baby. In May another
headline appeared, flagging a story at which we were meant to shake our
sorry heads. It announced that under a programme called the Nurse Family
Partnership, some pregnant teenagers were to be allocated a personal nurse
for the first two years of their baby's life, a state-sponsored ”family
friend” who, in the US version of the scheme, has meant fewer second
unwanted pregnancies, fewer injuries to children and decreased criminality
when they grow up. This first phase of the UK's pilot scheme, which might be
rolled out nationwide, would cost £7.5m at a time when cancer drugs are
subject to a postcode lottery. Listen carefully and you will hear the sound
of decent hands being wrung in despair.
Practitioners tasked with preventing teenage pregnancy claim we need statutory
sex education, better health services for young people, inspired local
”pregnancy co-ordinators”. Don't we also need to stop rewarding fecklessness
with benefits, picking up the bill for immorality and shoddy parenting? Is
your dander rising, your outrage simmering? Good. Now meet Coral Williams,
with her overflowing litter bin and her pretty, strained face, and ask who
could possibly need a helping hand more. Coral's mother is a crack addict,
currently in prison, who beat her with a horsewhip as a child, blaming her
for the death of Coral's father, who hanged himself before her birth. ”I
don't feel like I ever had a childhood,” she says, without self-pity.
Her aunt and uncle and her sister used heroin; she raised herself alone from
the age of nine until she contacted social services and asked to be taken
into care at 12. Her foster placements all broke down, too far from her home
town of Reading, too rural and unfamiliarly cosy. Last year, at 17, she gave
birth to Kacie, with no means of supporting herself or the chubby blonde 15-month-old
girl with pierced ears who ambles around their poky flat rented by social
services. Her boyfriend is 32 (and a father to three more children by two
other mothers) and was ”thrilled” by news of the pregnancy, while Coral was
”shell-shocked”. She had been having contraceptive injections but wanted to
give her body a rest and ”fell” pregnant — the term the girls use denotes a
momentary stumble, nobody's fault — and the morning-after pill failed. She
was not one of those who plan a baby to steer their lives in another
direction; she is one of those who just let it happen.
She was studying child development at Thames Valley University with a view to
becoming a nursery nurse, a course she gave up when her baby was eight
months old, not wanting strangers to care for her. But what now? The Nurse
Family Partnership scheme, aimed at deprived young mothers and which would
have started 16 weeks into Coral's pregnancy, might have been just the thing
to make a difference. Based on the idea that pregnancy and childbirth
present a window of responsiveness in young women who might normally reject
offers of help, US trials suggest that the nurse — visiting no more than
once a week — could have had a dramatic impact on Coral's wellbeing and
Kacie's readiness for school, subsequent education and prospects of escaping
deprivation.
On her own Coral seems vulnerable, isolated, broke; surely having a baby in
her circumstances is the worst disaster that could have befallen her? Later
I will question this judgment, but my first reaction to her is concern and,
to be honest, horror. Before we start willing Coral to get a grip and start
making carrot purée in freezable portions, however, we should know that she
has other problems. After her telephone call to the police during a domestic
row — ”My boyfriend just wouldn't leave, nothing worse” — Kacie has been
placed on the local child-protection register, a measure Coral's social
worker had wanted after the birth, though Coral's mothering instincts had
won her round. Coral is furious and indignant about the measure but, on the
day we meet at least, mostly deflated by what she sees as the unfairness of
it all. ”I know that I'm just another statistic, but I love my daughter,”
she says. ”I would never hurt her.”
In England approximately 39,000 girls under 18 become pregnant every year, of
whom half have abortions. In affluent areas research shows that
three-quarters of teenage pregnancies are terminated, as opposed to less
than one-fifth
in poor neighbourhoods. There is much squabbling over how well or badly we are
doing in countering the trend. The government's Teenage Pregnancy Strategy
was launched in 1999, aiming, unrealistically, to halve the rate by 2010. So
far it claims only an 11.15% reduction. Other voices — especially shrill ones
in the Daily Mail — point to a rise in numbers at different times. We have
the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe, a ”shameful record” in the
words of Tony Blair. But we should beware the stereotyping.
Sometimes young motherhood confers a startling maturity. When I visit
17-year-old Aimee Horswill in Glossop, Derbyshire, we walk past a pub
outside which a group of young mums sit in the sunshine with their babies.
Aimee is no paragon of virtue: she used to skip school, was in an abusive
relationship, living away from home at 14, but she wouldn't consider joining
the pub crowd. She has recently moved here and needs to make new friends for
herself and her 18-month-old daughter, Ella-Mai, but she has standards. ”It
doesn't look nice, babies outside a pub. It's not right.” Strikingly
beautiful, Aimee's delicacy belies her strength of character. She tells me
that local housing officers are sick of her demands that they do better for
her child. She moved here from Nunhead, south London, last year, following
her mother, to make a fresh start away from the tough streets and schools to
which she ”wouldn't dream” of sending her precious daughter. Ella attends a
local nursery, funded by the government's Care to Learn scheme, when Aimee
is studying hairdressing at a local college with a view to working
eventually in special-effects hair and make-up (her father is a model-maker
for movies). Ella-Mai's father, Triac, an upbeat young man who has overcome
his own troubled background, is training to be a store detective and has
applied to join the police.
They are a polite, proud, hard-working couple, their little council house
newly painted, its wooden bathroom floors sanded to eradicate the stench of
urine bequeathed by a former tenant. Aimee became pregnant at 15. She took
her pill in a haphazard, ”childish” way, she says, there wasn't much sex
education at her inner-London schools and she was too embarrassed to listen
when her mum broached the subject. ”As a mother now, I want Ella and I to
discuss everything. I don't want her to be a young mother. Even when she's
17, I'll be asking to meet any boy she's even thinking of seeing. I'm going
to be much stricter than my parents, because I know what young people are
getting away with out there.”
Once reconciled to the idea of motherhood (her dad was initially furious; she
was unsure; Triac said whatever she decided was fine by him), she set about
doing it her way. Her parents have consistently offered help, but she is an
independent spirit, opting for a home birth with a birthing pool, scented
candles and no pain relief. Her mother was not allowed to attend. ”I wanted
it to be a special moment for Triac and me. I'll never forget his laugh when
she arrived, a sort of cry of happiness.” Aimee and their baby moved into
the downstairs of her mother's Victorian house. ”It hasn't been a real
struggle for me,” she smiles. ”
I'm lucky to have family help and a lovely boyfriend.” Few maternal duties
were delegated. ”I didn't want my mum to take over. It was my baby and I
wanted to do it my way.” The only pupil who had ever returned to Pimlico
School to sit GCSEs after a baby was born (Triac brought Ella-Mai in for
regular feeds), Aimee makes her teenage pregnancy seem like part of an
enduring love story rather than a social crisis. She believes having a baby
at 15 is irresponsible, however. ”I'd rather have done it later. The best
age to have a baby is 27.”
Coral and Aimee were two of the girls chosen by the photographer Tina Stallard
for her study of pregnant teenagers in Reading and London last year, an
attempt to explore the fragile margins between childhood and motherhood.
Their dilemma is one of being trapped, so young, so cocooned, at the centre
of a moral panic. Stallard's images also reveal the unsuppressible beauty of
her subjects. The dewy skin of the mothers and the freshness of their regard
after the shock of labour and birth, seem childlike in themselves, somehow
innocent no matter how rackety their teenage years have been. We see them in
gritty TV documentaries, chavs with face-lifting ponytails and Vicky Pollard
voices, but step closer and you will also find maternal devotion and
self-sacrifice. Should we disapprove of them with quite such distaste?
Teenage pregnancy costs the NHS £63m, and if a young mother isn't in work or
training for the first three years of her child's life, she will cost
£19,000-25,000, the government estimates, apart from housing benefits, for
which no figures are published. But aren't the choices made by older mothers
also dubious? As women delay motherhood, reassured by the promise of IVF in
their forties, encouraged to freeze eggs and embryos, older mothers are
responsible for what has been called an ”infertility time bomb” that will
send our declining birth rate plummeting further. Their medical
complications — prematurity, for instance — are a drain on the NHS and
similar to those associated with teenage pregnancies. Yet, tellingly, nobody
has bothered to calculate the cost of middle-aged maternity.
In the first half of the last century, young motherhood was unremarkable, but
then so was young marriage; a hundred years ago couples started families
young because infant mortality among the poor meant you needed a brood as an
insurance policy, and women's life expectancy was short. That has gone, but
the sense of omnipotent fertility with which we have replaced it, the faith
that science will prevail over renegade biology, means that many women end
up swamped in sorrow, having missed their chance. Most of those women would
have preferred condemnation as girls to childlessness as pensioners.
At my own school 30 years ago, there were two teenage pregnancies, both
massive scandals; one of the girls ran away out of fear and shame, the other
delivered a baby in the downstairs loo of her home on a junior executive
estate; the first her mother knew was a newborn's cry emerging from the
avocado suite. For weeks we classmates walked around morbidly pondering the
gory details, half-horrified, half-thrilled by the sheer badness of it, but
such cases were rare. In the intervening decades, teenage mothers have come
to represent a moral decline, maybe bequeathed by the 1960s and its
dismissal of the stigma that once kept wayward lusts in check and
back-street abortionists in business. Teenage mothers are today assumed to
be scrounging grants and council flats, harming their own prospects and
blighting the lives of their children born into an unbreakable cycle of
deprivation. The chaos of their lives terrifies us. Might it be catching?
Aimee tells me of a girl who had a baby at 15, quickly adopted by her own
mother, a subsequent pregnancy that ended in termination, and another after
that. I ask her if, in such a case, financial assistance and housing should
only be offered on the undertaking of long-term contraceptive implants or
injections. ”Oh yes,” Aimee says, ”that could be a way of
stopping it.” A policy-maker in the area tells me that the battle is to keep
at-risk girls unimpregnated until the first baby is two years old, the
sapping energy of a toddler making the prospect of another baby far more
daunting. Good grief, I hear myself saying, can we only deter them one child
down the line?
Is it the age of these mothers we object to, or their sexual habits, their
blokes, their welfare-dependent lifestyles? Imagine them transposed to a
Home Counties setting, in which the privately educated daughter of lawyers,
say, got pregnant at 15 and, with support from parents, is bringing up her
child to pass exams and surrender its seat on the bus to its elders. How
much less irritated do we feel by this girl? Would we fear for her child?
Not in the least. What we would see is an unfortunate but not
life-shattering mistake; except that we would probably see nothing at all,
since the middle-class teenager is far more likely to have a termination,
arranged and hushed up by mortified parents, than a girl from a deprived
area. The aristocratic or literary version of the teenage mum, meanwhile,
moves beyond merely acceptable to desirably romantic; think of Jane Clark,
barefoot and pregnant in Saltwood Castle, or the novelist Lisa St Aubin de
Teran, seduced by an aristocratic Venezuelan bank-robber at 16, creatures
from a fairy tale rather than a sink estate.
There is little glamour in the life of Jade Lewendon, who lives in a tower
block in a small flat with her father, who works at a Reading brewery. He is
asleep next door while we talk, having worked a night shift; in the kitchen
making a cup of tea is her asylum-seeker boyfriend, Lexis, 19, the father of
her 16-month-old son, Leo. Jade is plump, with amazingly clear eyes and a
benign look of contentment in the face of what others would deem constrained
circumstances. This is the tricky paradox in the nanny state's attempt to
deter young girls by stressing the hardships of teenage mothering: you might
successfully warn against drugs and booze by having addicts testify to their
torment, but single mums seem unhelpfully happy. None of these girls
expresses regrets; asked if they would opt to have the same children 10
years later, at 25, say, half of them look at you as if you are mad.
Jade's own parents split up when she was four, and she has known hardship; she
came to live with her father when her mother, temporarily homeless, was
sleeping in her car, but family is what she treasures. Her baby is calm and
sweet, watching Postman Pat on a wide television; 500 guests are expected at
his christening party; the walls of the flat are hung with snaps of seaside
outings and Christmas dinners with paper hats. How has the arrival of her
son changed her? ”You get up when they do,” she shrugs. By her own account,
Jade was a tough cookie, expelled from school at 14 after a fight in which a
teacher's arm ”was pushed”, which was classed as assault. ”I'm happier now,”
she continues. ”I used to fight a lot. I was in trouble with police. Now I
prefer to stay in. Leo has given me a focus.”
Is Leo missing out because of her age? ”No,” she laughs. ”I'm a patient mum.
He has every toy going. I spent £200 on him at Christmas. He got a hand-held
console, a baby PlayStation, a walker, a swing.” As she lists the treats she
shouldn't be able to afford, I think of the wealthy mothers I know whose
children get vile carob Easter eggs and circle the park on tasteful wooden
scooters, enviously eyeing the gaudy Thomas the Tank Engine versions
considered too vulgar. Statistics tell us that little Leo will be
disadvantaged socially and educationally; what they don't forecast is that
he will also be blithely secure in the cosily feathered nest of his
disadvantage.
Lexis, a Liberian, is not allowed to work, so the family live carefully with
income support, housing benefit, child benefit, and the help of Jade's
father, who pays the bills and buys their food. ”I get £53 a week. I'm not a
burden on society. It's my dad that helps me.” A quick glance at Jade might
confirm your prejudices: she seems complacent; she didn't breast-feed; she
has no burning ambition for independence, though there is a plan to design
”websites from home” after A-levels. Yet she is also remarkable in her
selflessness. Most teenage girls are self-absorbed, stressing about skinny
jeans and boyfriends with cars, while none of the young mothers I met
worried about much except their children.
Now come with me across town to meet the Honors of Reading. Mum and Dad are
Tracey and Paul; she, attractive and warm; he, kind-hearted, a grafter, a
local youth football coach. Their life is run — overrun, actually — by
babies. Their son Stephan (from Tracey's first marriage) got his girlfriend,
Sarah, pregnant at 13 with their son, Cody, now two. Their daughter Sophie,
18, is the mother of Chardonnay, now 18 months. Their younger daughter,
Carly, a pretty, softly spoken girl who opens the door to me today, had her
baby, Riley, at 15. The stark facts make them sound like guests on The
Jeremy Kyle Show, inhabitants of a latter-day provincial Gin Alley littered
with Asbos, daytime telly and morning spliffs. This could not be further
from the truth. The Honor house is pretty and — considering the number of
infants to which it plays host — miraculously tidy, the siblings mutually
helpful, the parents involved and loving to a fault.
Carly was 14 when she found out she was five months pregnant at a scan with
her mother by her side; her periods hadn't stopped and she ascribed her
burgeoning tummy to overeating.
It was too late for an abortion. ”My parents weren't cool. They were like,
’Not again!’ I heard my dad shouting when my mum told him, while they were
making the packed lunches in the morning. But by the time he got home from
work he was just thinking about what they could do to help me. They bought
everything for Riley, which made me ashamed. Because I was under 16, I only
had £17 a week, and it wasn't enough for milk, nappies and clothes.”
Despite the examples of her older siblings, parental warnings and sex
education, Carly was not using contraception. Her mother had given her the
pill, but later found the tablets unused in her bedroom. ”By the time I was
making her swallow them,” says Tracey, ”she was already pregnant.” Carly
smiles: ”I just never thought it would happen.” When it did, she had no real
worries. ”I always knew my mum and dad would help me. They never blamed me.
If they were disappointed, they kept it to themselves.”
Riley's father is boyfriend Ricky, of whom her parents didn't once approve.
Since spending seven months in Huntercombe prison for burglary, however, he
has apparently turned a corner, is doing a bricklaying course, and living
nearby until they can move into a little house courtesy of her father. Carly
is back at school, Riley's term-time nursery place funded by the
government's Care to Learn scheme. Was it a good move to get pregnant so
young? ”I would say yes, because I'm okay.”
Indeed. It is not the young mothers or their obviously thriving babies one
worries about here, but the self-sacrificing parents who (when they have
time off from converting garages to spare bedrooms and doing overtime to buy
and renovate properties for their fertile brood) berate themselves for their
failure. ”We feel we've let them down,” says Tracey with a sigh. ”I should
have drummed it into them harder, they should have had a career before
having babies.”
At her wits' end, Tracey has considered, and dismissed, putting Chelsea, her
youngest daughter, now eight, on the pill as soon as her periods start, or
simply never letting her out on her own. But why should she suffer because
of the others? I say to her, ”Look at these with babies. I know it looks
nice but you need to get a career.” None of the older girls liked school;
Sophie's aversion was diagnosed as phobic; Carly truanted persistently. At
17 Sarah has no GCSEs and shows no ambition apart from vaguely wanting to be
a chef, having found hairdressing ”boring”.
The Honors make you rethink the easy opinions about teenage pregnancy, and
also the complex scientific ones. The ”psychosocial theory” that suggests
young girls reach menarche earlier when there is family stress, and start
their sexual activity younger when the father is absent, obviously doesn't
apply here. More generally, this family is not poor or marginalised; its
elders are clear moral role models, committed to their marriage. So what do
we conclude? Maybe that too much love and tolerance is to blame in this
child-centred version of parenthood, awash with compassion and short on
censure. This is a view of the modern family as an all-accepting refuge, not
a place where you learn life's rules, but where you are protected when you
have broken them. What if Carly's parents had warned her never to darken
their door with another underage pregnancy? She giggles. ”How could anyone
do that to their kids?” You can see why Stephan's girlfriend, Sarah, whose
childhood was bleak, loves being attached to this happy brood. A baby-faced
tomboy in a tracksuit, Sarah was sexually active at 12 and pregnant with
Cody at 13. Was that right, I ask? ”I don't care!” she shoots back. ”I don't
care what people say or think.” Did anyone criticise her?
”A couple of people. No-one in authority.” Why is it such a big deal, she
asks, when young girls get pregnant? Because society needs you to work and
contribute, I say. People pay for her income support and nursery places with
their taxes. ”But I'll pay it back by working later and paying my taxes,”
Carly chips in, stung by this rare rebuke.
Later I ask Gill Frances, chair of the Advisory Group of Teenage Pregnancy, if
we are now beyond telling girls it is wrong to have sex at 12. She hesitates
slightly. ”’Wrong' is maybe not the best way to say it. It's not good for
their bodies, or their babies.” Indeed, the babies of young mothers are 60%
more likely to die at birth.
Some women are born to be mothers, whatever their age. Nikki Abbey, 20, is one
of them. When I arrive at her ground-floor housing association flat,
three-year-old Connor is busy at his little crafts table making Play-Doh
scrambled eggs for everyone, moving onto a maths game, clearly
button-bright, loving, adored, never once whining for sweets or television.
Nikki is calm and nurturing without trying. She had Connor at 16, the
product of a short relationship with a boyfriend who was keen to become a
father. ”I didn't want a baby,” she says, ”because I was in the sixth form
but he kept asking me, so I agreed after a month. I was naive. He didn't
want to be with me once I was pregnant. He just wanted a baby.”
For Connor's first 10 months she lived at her mother's house. She wanted to
stay at school, but Connor's father objected to him being cared for in the
crèche there, so Nikki left. Being over 16, she was able to apply for income
support (£400 a month) and received a £500 grant to buy the more expensive
essentials like a buggy. Times were tough, but so was she: she applied for a
flat, furnished it with the help of family and friends, and met her
boyfriend, Daniel, a travel agent and prizewinning snooker ace, with whom
she now has baby Cadan. Daniel supports them and, with a CSA contribution,
Nikki no longer claims benefits. She is brimming with the future, planning
to become a support worker at her local hospital, and when we meet is about
to move into the house she and Daniel are buying. A founder of the
mother-and-baby unit at Ranikhet school, she was once painfully shy, but has
found her voice and her métier in caring for children.
Nikki's story reminds you that two factors transform the lives of these girls:
their mothers and their men. Nikki struck lucky on both counts; others are
fortunate to score one of the two. It is depressing to consider young lives
for which babies are the beginning and end of aspiration. All the girls say
they will go on to qualify and work, but how much higher could they have
aimed without babies to distract
them? Teenage mothers are 20% more likely to have no qualifications at 30 than
those giving birth at 24 or older, and 22% more likely to be living in
poverty. Even the ones who strive and succeed will always ”be playing
catch-up with their peers”, according to one former teenage mum. When
contemporaries are buying that foot-on-the-ladder first studio flat, they will
need — but won't be able to afford — a two-bedroom property, so will be more
likely to remain in social housing. Then there's the benefits trap. To
compensate for available state help, they would need a job with a starting salary
of around £20,000 — and remember, none of these girls shone at
school, let alone aspired to a stellar career.
For the poorest, ironically, the arrival of a baby makes least difference. The
death of social mobility under successive governments means it probably
doesn't matter whether they have a baby at 14 or 24. New research by the
educational charity the Sutton Trust has found that children born in the
1950s had a better chance of escaping poverty than those born in 1970, that
children as young as three are slipping behind, and that schools are no
longer the catalysts for self-betterment we once hoped they were. Without
the prospect of meaningful rewards — interesting job, good money, a step up
the ladder — why would they wait to have a child?
For a girl like Coral, motherhood is a solution where there are no others;
it's not her child that holds her back, it is her grisly history. What's the
point of asking such young women if they think they ought to have
unprotected, underage sex when there is no moral order in their universe?
The miracle is Coral's instinctive kindness to her daughter after the
agonising abuse she herself suffered. Without Kacie, would Coral now be
swotting for A-levels and planning a shiny career in the media? Hardly. The
better question is: how much more hopeless would she feel without this child
who returns an unconditional love of which nobody has ever deemed her
worthy?
A few months ago I would have automatically assumed a beleaguered girl like
this to be an unfit mother, her child better off elsewhere. The informed
picture is more complex, and now I am far less sure. ”Kacie has given me
something to live for,” she says. ”Before I had nothing. I never let anyone
close. I had no plans, no discipline, no-one to tell me what to do, or guide
me.” How can it be that I am pleased that Coral has her daughter, a
blameless child born into cramped, penurious, uncertain beginnings, but also
into love? Because with Kacie, chewing purposefully on a dog-eared toy and
whining with teething pains, her mother nurtures at least a hope of making a
life, and even a second-chance childhood, for both of them.
"The solutions are simple. Mandatory abortion for pregnant under 18s, prosecution for statuatory rape, and the placement of affected children in care. It may seem a tad harsh to the liberally minded, but the alternative is a sea of broken lives and unwanted children. "
In reply to the solution above: it has been tried and found not to work. There is an alternative and that is hard too; face your own issues and find out why you feel that way about those not yet born and those who have underage sex.
May, southampton, UK
I was in France recently for a conference detailing the effects abortion on our world. The professionals are certain there is no future in abortion, so, you made the right choice despite what the liberal teachers tell you. Well Done.
Anyway, there was a young woman doing a talk about her experience, she had become a mother at a young age, 16 yrs. She had wanted to talk to others in her situation and so started a web page. Gradually the organisation has grown. It is a French web site
www.jeunesparents.ch
May, southampton, UK
"At my school we're pretty much encouraged to have sex so long as it's "safe" sex. The idea of abstinence until marriage is not even entertained in the classroom.. Add that to the fact that we're expected to be sleeping around, sorry, sexually emancipated, and teachers push their liberal views down our necks.."
I think teenage mothers should be supported. But it seems to me that the teachers with their "liberal views" bear a big chunk of responsibility here, and behind them the government that determines what is to be taught to young people in the schools. We expect children to learn and practice everything else they are taught in school, why not sex? And of course girls who have sex risk pregnancy and disease. There is no such thing as "safe sex" - there is no foolproof contraceptive or birth control method that has been made yet. One would think that if the government really wanted a solution to teenage pregnancy, they would change what they are teaching the kids at school.
Nilla, Canada,
I don't see why you think being teenagers precludes us from being good mothers. Some of you seem to just have a major problem with the so called underclass and God forbid we breed! If you just hate our kind what does it matter whether we have our children at 15 or 35? We'll always be scum to you.
I was under pressure to abort when I became pregnant at 14. People from all angles telling me my child would have a miserable life and I wouldn't have one at all. No education, no future. I felt so brow-beaten. Needless to say the first five months of my pregnancy were hellish.
I spent a lot of the time I got off school in Waterstones reading about active births and co-sleeping and started to look forward to it all. And it was great. Far less stressful than I was told it would be. The lowest point was being forced back to school. I couldn't stand leaving my son and I'd dash home at breaktime to feed him for fear of my milk drying up. I had to give up school in the end. He comes first.
Leah, Kendal,
hi aimee i read your artical in the closer magazine im 11 and i realy dont want to get pregnant until im in my 20s but what would u say plus my mum is pregnant at the moment
chloe pool, york, uk
I'm the 16 year old mother to 6 month old Jacob.
I read the article and one girl stood out to me, and since I read an article about her in Closer. Aimee Horswill. I loved the pictures of her bump and only have one compliant - where the hell are your stretch marks?!?!?!?
I pride myself on being a good mother. I'm with Jacob as often as I can (although I'm returning to do highers so it's hard) I breastfed him until he was 3 and a half months, I cried for a week when my milk vanished, I had tried expressing when at school but my milk supply just wouldn't keep up. I change all his nappies, dress him, take him to appointments, take him to baby massage classes etc. I love being a mother and like I said, I think I'm a good mother. I think most of you shouldn't be so quick to judge. Some teenage mothers will be better parents than some twice their age.
Sarah Scott, Macduff, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
My name is Aimee Horswill i appeared in the sunday times artical "jim slip mothers" i find alot of these comments disturbing and extreamly ignorrant.
The main issue i have engaged is the fact of goverment stated welfare.I am 17 years of age and am a qualified hairdresser hoping in the near future to study special effects hair and make-up and yes..... i do get help from the goverment with my daughters child care cost as many other pupils and parents earning less than £20.000 a year do. All us younge mothers are not incapible of looking after our children and making an amazing life and future for them.
I also do not see the need of all the critisism against single parents, do they not deserve praise for working so hard on there own?
I do not have to prove or explain my self to any of you self centured snobs.
i am an excellent mother and will never regret bringing my stunning daughter into this world.
Aimee Horswill, Debyshire, uk
Just for you "trevor in London" that picture is a celibration of pregnancy and is quite frankly beautifull its just a shame you are so shallow minded to appreciate this.
This was a personal picture of my self and my daughter which i did not realise would be published on the frond of a paper untill i bought it.
Me and my photographer have a wonderful relationship and she has done an amazing job!
Aimee Horswill, Debyshire, uk
DON'T PLAY WITH FIRE!
To: Cloe, Birmingham
"At my school we're pretty much encouraged to have sex so long as it's "safe" sex. The idea of abstinence until marriage is not even entertained in the classroom.. Add that to the fact that we're expected to be sleeping around, sorry, sexually emancipated, and teachers push their liberal views down our necks.."
It sounds as if you need to find a school with
mature and responsible teachers who are genuinely concerned about the welfare and proper education of their students.
Girls who "sleep around"...usually catch whatever is "going around"...and by that I don't mean a decent and responsible husband! They "pick up" diseases and bad reputations...and, as a bonus, often end up with a "bun in the oven"..or two, or three! The sad fact is that it's the girl who "gets burned" when she is careless with "the oven" and "plays with fire".
Girls have to look out for themselves and be VERY SMART: Boys don't get pregnant!
Garth Rex, Glendale Heights, USA
Eh? We all know contraception is only 98% effective. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't that mean that out of every 100 times teens (or indeed anyone) engages in protected intercourse 2 of these instances will end in pregnancy anyway? A 3rd of those will end naturally and then, what, half (?) of the rest will end in abortion. That still leaves us with a lot of births. Now this is surely to be expected. At my school we're pretty much encouraged to have sex so long as it's "safe" sex. The idea of abstinence until marriage is not even entertained in the classroom.
What I'm trying to say is that it's all well and good bemoaning the rates of teen pregnancy and promoting contraception but you don't seem to take into account that it fails 2% of the time and 2% is a helluva lot given how many of us are sexually active. Add that to the fact that we're expected to be sleeping around, sorry, sexually emancipated, and teachers push their liberal views down our necks, is it really any wonder?
chloe, birmingham,
THE TRUE TRUTH!
To: Garth Strong, San Diego, USA
From one Garth to another, you have, in your post to Diane of Derbyshire, at last cut through the fog of this issue and told "The Truth About Gymslip Mothers!"
I must confess that I could not have done it better.
Illegitimate pregnancies among teenaged girls permanently change their lives and, most likely, seriously limit their lifetime opportunities. It's no joke!
Every British girl should read your post when she reaches twelve years old. No... make that eleven!
Their parents should read it at the same time also!
Garth Rex, Glendale Heights, USA
To: Diane, Derbyshire:
"Teenage motherhood is neither wrong nor right, it's something that just is, has been and always will be. It's only a crisis if we make it one."
Diane, a teenaged mother is, in the majority of cases, a girl who has been deprived of her adolescence!
That makes teenaged motherhood wrong!
Parenthood is not an easy game, and most adolescents are simply not sufficiently well equiped to cope, in terms of experience, maturity, personal development or education.
Let girls become themselves...their ADULT selves, when they are best equipped to make adult choices....before they become parents!
Garth Strong, San Diego, USA/CAL.
What the article points out is that all these teenage parents have in common is poor-parenting; either awful brutality of mawkish sentimentality! As we see it is the quality of parental love that counts; as a parent love is saying "no" and "this is wrong" should never be diminished!
Letting deprived people have children is not a second chance - for the babies! It may be that these tortued souls do indeed "love" their children more than their more fortunate peers - but that is hardly an argument for letting them have them - children are not a consolation prize for a nasty childhood! Nor are they dolls - they are human beings with a need for a moral code to be inprinted - and this cannot be done with revolving door partners/absent fathers, in love and penury.
As a nation we should encourage the idea of a family being made up of two people, wedded for life - who WANT to do the best for the child or children they CHOOSE to raise! Not leave it to the state-sponsored happenstance!
K Lepper, Cheshire, UK
Teenage motherhood is neither wrong nor right, it's something that just is, has been and always will be. It's only a crisis if we make it one.
The problem today is that our kids often aren't equipped for parenthood, through no fault of their own, they don't have the simple skills needed to run a household because no one thinks to teach them anyone. Many can't cook, make and mend clothes, all the things our grandmothers learnt at school from an early age. Instead they have to pick it up as they go along or not at all. Then there's the whole living off our taxes issue which only bothers me in as much as it means their own parents can't afford to assist them like they would have in previous generations. And that it probably means the man half responsible is shirking the rest of his responsibilities.
Diane, Derbyshire,
What an irony that these babies/toddlers are enjoying the undoubted advantage of being cared for by their own mothers, whlle many mothers from the double income families with the big houses and mortgages put their children in childcare for up to 12 hours a day. As a consequence many suffer separation anxiety and shut down emotionally. With the additional disadvantage of less personal interaction and verbal experience they can become the children whom their first teachers find unprepared for the social and academic demands of school. What an upside down world we live in!
J M Pike, Stroud, UK
Anyone involved in family history will know full well that teenage pregnancy is what got most of us here in the first place.
The need to stop teenage pregnancy is about ensuring plans for education, training and planning can regain control. One reason teenage pregnancies and young motherhood is popular is the ability to get housing and independence. Maybe that's how some girls want it to be. They are only doing what their elders have done before them although in the past the above benefits were not always available.
John Charlesworh, Kingswood London , UK
Do teenage mothers make better parents? In my experience the answer is no. They are more likely to be less well off, have less experience of how to treat a young baby, be poorer prepared for motherhood and more likely to be single parents when the child arrives. Of course this is a generlaisation. Many single teenage mothers make great mothers - but on the whole it is better for the child - and better for the mother, if she can prepare to have a family. When I worked in an Unemployment Benefit Office in 1991, a 14 year old girl came in an enquired about what benefits would be available to her should she become pregnant. I asked her if she was pregnant and she said' Of course not. That is why I am checking up on how much I will get first'. I will never forget my thoughts that were that this was the wrong way to go about bringing a child into the world.
Denis Brown, Birkenhead, Wirral
While overly praising younger mothers, the article decides it must, in parallel, condemn older mothers and childless women. Are older mothers really less suitable than a 16 year old? The article says "women delay motherhood, reassured by the promise of IVF in their forties". One in seven couples has a fertility problem and IVF is a last resort, it is not "reassuring" and it is certainly not "promised" as a treatment or a "promise" of having a baby. Many of the women who have supposedly "delayed" motherhood until their late thirties onwards are in stable relationships and have actually been trying for a baby for many years.
Tina, South Wales, UK
I can't stand all the vitriol against single mothers in some readers comments - you'd think I'd be used to it after 18 years! But it still hurts. I have worked all my life, since the age of 17, and will be completing my degree at the end of this year. My son is attending university interstate and I slaved at menial jobs to send him to a good school before that. Yet, I never got used to the feeling of being a second-class citizen simply because some guy couldn't face up to his promises and responsibilities. If there's going to be vitriol, let it be directed at fathers who do not attend to their responsibilities.
Now I am only 37 and free! I don't envy women my age who are desperately trying to fall pregnant. I don't feel I have to "catch up" materially with my peers because I have what no money can buy - a beautiful, handsome, kind and independent young man who is my son.
Jenny, Canberra, Australia
"Most teenage girls are self-absorbed, stressing about skinny jeans and boyfriends with cars, while none of the young mothers I met worried about much except their children."
Well, thank you for turning the rest of us into a bunch of moral vacuums. I'm a teenage girl, and because I've had the good sense not to get pregnant , I've been turned into a narcissistic gold-digger. I don't wear skinny jeans, nor am I interested in whether or not my boyfriend has a car. Perhaps Ms. White ought to stop applying her own standards to the rest of us. For the record, I'm far more interested in getting a good degree and being able to support myself, so that when I do have children I'm not a drain on the welfare system.
Clare, Manchester,
I read this article feeling incredibly frustrated.
As far as I can see the debate should not be about how old you are when you have your child, but whether you are bringing that baby into the world where the parents have made the conscious decision that they want a child and are emotionally and financially able to support that decision.
I am currently in my late 20s and pregnant with my first child. My relationship with my husband is happy and stable and when we agreed to start trying for a baby it was in the knowledge that we both wanted to make that commitment to a family together.
The reason, in my opinion, that young mothers get such a bad reputation is because as a stereotype, this level of thinking and planning does not go into their choices. I find it maddening that people like myself and my husband who work incredibly hard have 40% tax deducted from our wages, to fund the irresponsible lifestyle choices of teenage girls who give nothing back to society!
Sam , London,
Women who are older and have problems conceiving should not be seen as a drain on sociey for needing IVF or help conceiving. In most cases, I suspect these women will have been working for at least 20years and will have paid tax and national insurance. Which I'm sure is probably contributing to the housing benefit of young single parents.
Ali, London,
An excellent article. I too though notice the lack of reference to males. Being a parent of two adult sons and an adult daughter, I talked freely with all of my children and emphasised the responsibilities involved to my sons should they get a woman pregnant. Thankfully, this never occurred until my sons were into their late twenties. My daughter who is now 22 recently became pregnant. What is it that scorns the use of contraception and why do males still have their heads in the sand regarding their own health and safety when it comes to sex.? HIV is still very much alive and kicking, along with the other STD’s. In 2006 4.3 million lives were newly diagnosed world wide with HIV. Why is there still very little sex education around and why are parents often embarrassed if by talking it could safe an unwanted pregnancy or even worst a life time infection.
Mark Harris, Swansea, Wales
Pregnant girls often come into the council doors cheerily asking, "how do I get a house?". Meanwhile, the list is filled with single mothers with a single child, still waiting. I sometimes wonder how those girls will be coping in a few years time when reality has kicked in.
Friends of mine who have been down this road have struggled to find work and get off benefits. Older friends who had children as teenagers (in the 60s and 70s) tended to be married, struggled at first but found things got easier. Sadly, long term health problems of the feminine kind seem more common on average, something the article failed to note, although it makes mention of the health risks posed to older mothers.
Council Worker , West Midlands ,
Ms. D, who complains of the lack of "condemnation of the young MEN who have contributed here", should pay more attention to previous comments, such as Mike of London's call for "prosecution for statutory rape".
If we enforced our laws regarding the age of consent--prosecuting any party, male or female, who can be identified as the predator or *both* parties if they are equally culpable, and prosecuting anyone else (parents, guardians, teachers, etc.) who could be identified as accessories (we used to have an offence of "householder permitting defilement of girls" for example), we would seen see a reduction in underage *illegal* sexual activity.
We don't have this attitude to other forms of underage law-breaking--no-one writes articles begging our sympathy for underage drivers ("Oh, what's the problem with driving at 13? They'll be driving anyway once they're 17.").
DGH, Kirkcaldy, North Britain
I have worked with some of those gymslip mums & many of them make excellent mothers. I have also placed their babies with adoptive families, with the teenage mother at my side, where she has decided that the baby's future rests with a new family...this takes tremendous courage.
Many more mature parents do not seem to do too a good job with their kids!!
We need to stop moralizing...
mary shaw, kings lynn, Norfolk
FALLING PREGNANT
The use of the curious expression "to FALL pregnant" in these posts is most interesting.
Now, at last, we know what causes pregnancy!
Garth Strong, San Diego, USA/CAL.
The fact of the matter is that in most cases, the tax payer has to foot the major portion of the bill. This should not be the case. The parents of these teenagers should be responsible for the upkeep of their offspring. This will perhaps lead to a drop in teenage pregnancies.
Hamad lone, Thornton Heath, England
As a teenage mother (I fell pregnant at 16 in the first year of my A levels) I know all too well the social stigma that goes with it. It doesn't matter if your child is clean, well behaved and happy... people will always be there putting you down, whispering about you or assuming that you must be ambitionless, unintelligent and inferior. Yes, I claim the benefits I am entitled to and I am very grateful. I'm sure that the people who are so outraged at the "scrounging young mothers" would expect financial support should they ever be in need. I am about to start a course with the OU to make getting a good qualification easier to juggle with being a good mother, I will one day be supporting myself and my son and will be a taxpayer myself but you can't explain that to everyone that throws you a dirty look can you?
All they see is what the media portrays, another young mum - the country going to the dogs. Thankyou for writing an article that bucks the trend of condemnation.
Hannah M, Derbyshire, England
I was a teenage mother and can relate to much in this article and some of the comments. I too find parenting columes and books amusing - i never found parenthood hard work, difficult or restricting.
Whilst my children were smaller I had a group of friends in a similar situation to myself - all teenage mothers and I admit we were on benefits, no help from the fathers and did take our children to pubs - normally because the play areas were not full of needles and dog excrement.
However, now 20 years later all of us have degrees, full time jobs and our children are all at university or collage and only one has gone on to be a teenage mother herself.
The simple fact is feckless people would be bad parents whatever age they had children.
And in response to some comments about how I coped when mine became teenagers. Sorry to disappoint but mine were not stroppy teenagers but well mannered motivated young women.
Sue, Northampton, UK
I noticed that there is SO much emphasis on the mothers in this article, how and why they conceived these children, whether or not they need more sex education, contraception etc... but why so little condemnation of the young MEN who have contributed here??? The inequality of everyone's scorn directed at these young women disgusts me. They didn't become parents on their own, so why doesn't anyone react with as much contempt at the fathers???
Why is teenage pregnancy equated with stupidity, when in fact it is really about fertility???
It isn't Victorian times, when a woman didn't know the facts of life until her wedding night!
And why, in 2007, are people making comments that belong in 1507, when women were branded witches for such "crimes" ?????
There are good parents and bad parents of any age or upbringing. The most neglectful parents are 2 doctors who have been plastered all over the news recently.
Ms D, Lincoln,
Although my view on teenage mothers is, there but for the grace of god go mine, it is not the comment I want to make about your article in last Sunday's magazine.
I thought the picture on the front of the magazine was not the right one to show, the subject being a 15 year old girl. Does this not break some ethical code, or even a legal one ? She is under 16 and therefore a minor. Not only do I feel that this was a wrong picture to show for the above reasons but also because it seems to glamorise the girl's situation. How many pictures have we seen showing models/actresses/famous women portrayed in the same way. In my opinion the two have been linked sending confusing messages to other young girls. In all this it is the resulting child that matters and the reality of being able to bring it up.
Mrs Fay Waugh, Cambridge,
This article seems to ignore the most important point, that babies cannot rescue people, and nor should they. Alice Miller (author of the Drama of being a child) argues that we pass on our unmet needs on to our children, and this is the perfect example. Lesley White argues that the babies of teenage girls provide the love that these girls never received. As a child of a teenage mother, I can assure you that I could never replace the love my parents did not receive, but certainly suffered the consequences. Our biggest concern, as a society, should be to make sure that these girls find fulfillment elsewhere, unfortunately by having babies so early they are just causing their own mistakes to be repeated by their children.
Rachel, London,
My mother fell pregnant with me at 14, 28 years ago. She certainly wasn't a slut, but she was rather naive and didn't realise she was pregnant until it was too late for a termination. The man who got her pregnant immediately disappeared. Throughout my childhood, she would get up in the morning, do a post round, then her office job, and then bar work in the evening once I had gone to bed, whilst I was cared for by my luckily very supportive grandparents. She was there in the morning to take me to school and she was there to read me a bedtime story. She also made enough to pay for me to have private tuition which enabled me to pass the Common Entrance exam to a great private school. Despite leaving school at 14, she's now an accountant. Not all single-parent, gymslip mums are created equal. No matter how old you are when you give birth, if you're prepared to work hard you can make a good life for yourself and your children. I am SO proud of my Mum!!
CW, London,
My mother was a teenaged parent and went on to have 6 children. Four of us have degrees and all of us have good jobs, stable homes and children of our own.
Frankie, Shetland,
There's nothing wrong with teenage pregnancies as long as we're happy to deal with a future where the largest portion of the population come from homes where their young mother is dependent on benefits, has had multiple children with multiple fathers and is semi-literate and non-taxpaying. If we're happy with that future than we should continue to subsidise irresponsible people with welfare payments courtesy of hard-working couples who scrimp to afford their own house and children.
If, on the other hand, this vision of the future is disturbing then we should means-test the parents of all single mothers and only grant benefits if the parents are unable to support their children + grandkids. Anyone without supportive parents should be given a minimum allowance and housed in a hostel with others with a built-in creche and school so they can be trained to become productive and support themselves. Otherwise we're just rewarding negligence and ignorance instead of discipline and ambition
MB, Edinburgh,
http://www.frederica.com/writings/lets-have-more-teen-pregnancy.html
deana, lewisham,
The problem is the same in the USA, kids having unprotected sex and thinking someone else is going to support them and their babies. Did they ever hear of adoption? These babies deserve a loving, stable home with a proper education in both academics and morals. They deserve to sleep at night with full bellies and no fear of mum being at the pubs hooking up with some other guy. No brains, just slutty behavior. Sorry, I call a spade, a spade.
Sue, Milton, USA
Its been going on for "donkey years" and why discredit a teenage Mum, it does not mean they are thick and cant cope, it does not give the Govenment the RIGHT to pump hormones into them to stop them having more Babies.
We have all coped in the past, why is it a problem now?
RED CHINA comes to mind!
Charles Linskaill, Edinburgh, UK
Two of my best, hardest-working and most committed students this year have been teenage mothers. One has a steady boyfriend (the baby's father) living with her; the other neither has nor wants any contact with her baby's father - the baby was the result of rape. But both are devoted, careful mothers, determined to achieve good exam results and a proper career; I am full of admiration and respect for both of them.
They have opened my eyes to one of the difficulties they face as they try to bring up their children: housing. As one of them explained to me,
"The council's given us our own little flat to live in, and that's good. But they always put all the young single mums into areas where all the problem families are. That's not a problem now, while my little one's at home, but how am I going to keep her away from the troublemakers when she's older? They blame teenage mums and say we can't control our children, but they actually make it harder for us to bring them up right."
G A, Southampton, UK
Anyway, I was a teenage mother, as was my mother, her mother and so on. My great great great grandmother is still with us. My daughter will no doubt be part of the 'shameful statistic' aswell. You can't expect us to be horrified or ashamed of ourselves when we just do what we know and what our family is used to.
I'm probably one of the lucky ones because I have the moral support of so many strong women and good men who respect us for what we do (most of the time :P ). I'd been surrounded by babies my whole childhood and adolescence, I find them no hardship at all, unlike, it seems, (after browsing the Alpha Mummy blog) a lot of older, working mothers.
Lucy, Stafford,
Two questions: when is it ever justifiable to publish a nude photograph of a fifteen-year-old girl?; was a licence granted by a local authority allowing the modelling to take place? I'd be grateful if the ST could answer both points....
Trevor , London,
What should be remembered is that the children of teenage mothers are very likely to become teenage parents themselves thus perpetuating the drain on the taxpayer. For a vast number of teenage mums it is not an "accident", but a calculated career move. Lets not forget ambition is the best contraception. Often the girls who become teenage mums have no future career prospects and the thoughts of a having to work long boring hours for minimum wage and then try to save for a deposit for a home of their own, offers no inducement to work. By having a child they secure attention, independence, a home of their own [in my area], and a nice steady income for the foreseeable future without having to do anything. Child care and courses are free and the government kindly gives them a gift of £500 [without any need to spend it on the child]. The disadvantages are vastly outweighed by the advantages. Should the government want to cut the teenage pregnancy rates then they should make it less appealing
Diane, Mansfield, Notts
I suppose my attitude to these children has changed since I found I couldn't have children myself - I gave up trying after 5 miscarriages. 3 of those miscarriages were before I was 16. Now I wish I had stuck with finding out what was really going on, instead of being grateful for a malfunctioning body (which I was at the time).
My best student at the moment is someone who had her first child at 14, and who now has 3 children. She is making up for lost time and is so motivated to learn. I wish some of my more fortunate students could take her example!
Chris R, Coventry, UK
The solutions are simple. Mandatory abortion for pregnant under 18s, prosecution for statuatory rape, and the placement of affected children in care. It may seem a tad harsh to the liberally minded, but the alternative is a sea of broken lives and unwanted children.
Mike, London,
I'm convinced teenage pregnancy statistics are inaccurate. My daughter became pregnant while attending a very selective grammar school. I know, for a fact, several of her school-friends were in the same situation. She has given birth to a beautiful, bright daughter, is completing her A-Levels, and applying to teacher training colleges.
Millions of people in Britain work in State subsidised industries, what's so wrong with Motherhood?
I, myself, have friends for whom it has never been the right time to have a baby, facing childless old age.
Gillies, Midlands, UK
The use of the phrase 'moral panic' in this article suggests there is something unbalanced, even deficient, about those who react with indignation over the issue of teenage pregnancy.
Yet reading the article suggests that, on the basis of hard evidence, equanimity or bland acceptance are surely the deficient responses.
Here are young people, already the product of chaotic lives, showing the same chaos in their own lives and passing it on to future generations. The expense to the those whose taxes pay for the vast structure of necessary care, from housing to social services, is measurable.
The effect on society in general is immeasurable.
Panic? It is those who echo corporal Jones's "Don't panic!" who are the bufoons here.
John Richardson, Elsenham, UK
There is a lot of delusion in this article.
These young women are only surviving with financial support of taxpayers, many of whom do without families and/or are in in the childless "benefit trap" of low wages that are not supplemented by tax credits and other benefits.
And the women saying they will be "future taxpayers" will only enter the workplace with get significant state support that far outweigh what they pay.
Vicky, Germany,
The higher trend for teenage pregnancy in Briton compared with the rest of Europe, is another reason we should shy away from the American model of the way we live our lives...we are Europeans...lets be more like our better behaved cousins not like the bloody Americans!
Sunny, Birmingham, England
Strange, how the author has picked out the 'startlingly pretty' and 'delicate' specimins of teenage motherhood. Did you think your article wouldn't have the same punch if you picked up the ones who do hang around outside pubs with their babies? You'd be right, of course, beautiful young girls make much better martyrs than chain-smoking teenage mothers.
Even in my catholic secondary school we have lots of sex education. If they can teach the importance contraception in a school that holds the catholic faith, then they can teach it in an average non-religious one.
As a teenager (not a mother) I find the idea of a 'baby-faced tomboy in a tracksuit' who responds to her underage pregnancy with an 'I don't care' slightly worrying.
SW, Southampton,
Sorry, I'm not convinced. I work full time for a salary that just about covers my child's nursery place - over £800 per month - plus even more on rent. Nothing left at the end of the month to save for a down-payment as I pay ridiculously high taxes to bank-roll other people's housing and baby play-stations, etc. the latter of which I could never afford for my own baby, as all leftover income goes on food, bills and strict necessities. I waited until 30 to have a baby to ensure I could afford it without having to rely on the state.
I could of course chuck it all in and live off benefits myself, but that was not the way I was brought up, nor is it the example I want to set my daughter. That's where the cycle comes in.
By the way, if we really want to talk stereotypes, what's all this carub and wooden scooter stuff. We eat chocolate and have plastic in our house (which is incidentally not in N1 or environs)... then again, maybe I'm not "middle-class" under the Times definition...
Nic, EAST London, UK
Well Anne, considering that when that does happen it will have been little over a decade that they themselves were "stroppy teenagers" they might well cope with it better than most.
Cheryl, Kingstanding, B'ham,
"Yet, tellingly, nobody has bothered to calculate the cost of middle-aged maternity. "
.....is that perhaps because those babies are being born to parents who have already achieved in life, will provide a home and upbringing themselves, who have already contributed to the NHS through their taxes !?
Its not telling its common sense.
lucy, london,
Couln't the amazingly high teenage pregnancy rate in the UK be a result of increasing privatization of public services and decreasing interference from the Government? Crumbling public schools and health, increabibly poor and expensive public transport, laughable public pensions... The list goes on and on. Meanwhile, young, mostly poor teenagers see pregnancy and having offspring as the only means to get something from a Government that otherwise does not give anything to society.
Helen, Stevenage, UK
The whole article makes saddens me. I teach in a socially deprived area and the majority of our new pupils come from teenage mothers who quite frankly do not have a clue. I know that some do their best by their child but the majority I deal with live lifestyles that appal me. I am tired of hearing how the lack of sex education in school is to blame. This is not what I see. The girls want the babies (well, 'think' they do) and know that they can afford it due to state benefits. They often measure a child's happiness on the amount of designer clothes they have and how many Playstation games they own. We will go nowhere with reducing the 'teenage pregnancies' until the State stops paying for their lifestyles.
Ms S, Leeds,
I feel terribly sorry for Coral in this story. She has had nothing but a raw deal all her life. I truly hope that she and her baby are able to find real happiness in the future and that from now on all goes well for her.
Jo, Kranji, Singapore
It would be interesting to go back in 10 years and see how these Mums are coping with stroppy teenagers instead of cuddly babies. Plastic toys are much cheaper than designer trainers.
Anne, Beijing, China